The 1860 Copley Amory collection of works by Aron from Kangeq,

In the summer of 1860 Copley Amory, the 19-year-old scion of a prominent and wealthy Boston family and a student at Williams College in Massachusetts, was a member of Williams' "expedition" to Labrador and Greenland, whose expenses he also covered to a significant extent. The expedition was led by 37-year-old science professor Paul Chadbourne (later to become president of the University of Wisconsin and of Williams College), and sailed from Thomaston, Maine on June 27th on the 136-ton top-sail schooner Nautilus under the command of Captain Ranlett, returning on September 11th. Onboard with Copley Amory were eight other Williams students, five of them, like Amory, in the class of 1861, and 10 "Passengers" including two students from Bowdoin college and apparently also Copley's one year younger brother who was a student at Harvard ("Amory, A. – Harv. '62"). When because of bad weather his ship was forced to spend some days anchored at Godthåb (), the "capital" of Greenland (with a population then of less than 300, including 20-30 ), Copley Amory took the opportunity to collect a number of watercolors, drawings, wood block prints and maps that had just recently been produced in response to an initiative by Hinrich Rink (1819- 1893), the Danish geologist (and the first "Eskimologist") who was the administrator (Inspektør) of South Greenland, which included almost the entire population of the island. The art collected by Amory included most notably a number of unique watercolors and drawings as well as wood block prints (one colored and titled by hand) by an invalid seal hunter named Aron (1822-1869) from the nearby settlement of Kangeq. Aron from Kangeq is now universally considered to be the "father of Greenlandic painting", in the words of the artist and archaeologist Eigil Knuth (1903-1996), who wrote a brief study of Aron's works in 1948 and was responsible for first bringing them to more general public attention in 1960.

Aron was born in 1822 in the small settlement of Kangeq, a mission station of the Moravian Brethren located in the mouth of Godthåb Fjord. The Moravians generally did not use surnames, and because Aron was one of the brothers (i.e., he belonged to the congregation) he had only one name and is called by the name of his settlement, Aron from Kangeq. Although a skillful hunter, around the year 1858 Aron became so ill from tuberculosis that he was no longer able to go out in a kayak. As a way to pass the time he then devoted himself to recording on paper the old oral traditions in texts, drawings, woodcuts and small watercolors. His crowded house was filled with other members of his family, ill like himself with tuberculosis, and though his illness forced him to be inactive for long periods, in between he made up for this by a flurry of productivity. His work having been brought to the attention of Hinrich Rink, who had a strong interest in promoting Greenlandic art and culture as described in more detail below, during the next 10 years, with shorter or longer interruptions, Aron's pictures went by kayak post from Kangeq to Godthåb, about 160 watercolors in all. Until his last letter and picture, from January 1869: "…I am too tired to continue this letter. What happens to us hereafter?" A couple of months "hereafter", Greenland's "national artist" died of Greenland's "national disease", tuberculosis (Meldgaard, 1982b).

The most important items in Amory’s collection are undoubtedly two previously unknown watercolors (next page) and a pencil drawing (top of following page) that was the sketch for “Ak’igssiamik”, one of Aron’s most famous (and now iconic) woodblock prints, showing a game in which a stuffed seal skin is used as a ball. This print was first published in the second volume of Rink’s Kaladlit Okalluktualliait [Greenlandic Folktales] in 1860, and the original wooden print block is now preserved at the Greenland National Museum in Nuuk/Godthåb (Rosing and Haagen, 1986).

1

“Greenlanders taking a Sunday stroll on a summer’s day”

2

“They met him on the ice”

·--' “Ak’igssiamik” (“About Aqigssiaq”, Woodblock No. 10 from Kalâdlit assilialiait)

3

The watercolor showing Kangeq is the only known depiction by Aron of the settlement subsequently known primarily for its association with his art. In fact, when Eigil Knuth wanted to show an illustration of Kangeq as it looked in Aron’s day, the best he could do was to reproduce a watercolor by the catechist Anders Petersen from Frederikshåb, in which a large house shown on the left was inhabited by Peter Severin Lund, the clerk of the Royal Greenland Trade office, and the other large house on the right was Aron’s (Knuth, 1968, p. 47). This would indicate that as compared with the numerous turf houses shown in Perersen’s painting and in Aron’s own watercolor of Kangeq, his family was relatively well-to-do. (Kangeq no longer exists as a settlement, having been abandoned in 1974 after which most of its inhabitants moved to Nuuk/Godthåb, about 25 km away.)

Over a half century after Amory's early death in 1879 at age 38, his "Greenland Voyage" collection was assembled in the early 1940s by still unknown hands into a leather covered loose-leaf album with that gilt-embossed title, and in the late 1970s was found in the stock of a Boston antiquarian bookseller who had no idea of its origin or the significance of its contents. Subsequent research was able to uncover considerable information on the collector and the circumstances of his Greenland voyage, as well as the origin of several iconic images of the earliest Greenlandic graphic art that are based on works in this collection.

Other than a death certificate there were essentially no public traces of Copley Amory's life, and what did remain was buried in the archives of Williams College, whose connection with him could only be deduced much later from mention of the Greenland expedition in an obscure publication from 1862. The results of these studies are summarized here. Although what follows may appear to some as excessively discursive, Amory's collection was a product of the intersection of a large number of fascinating and variously talented characters playing their roles in a remote and quite un-European society 150 years ago. Their individual histories surely give added meaning to the different items of which Amory's collection is composed, and also allow one to get some feeling for the flavor of Greenland at a very early stage of its modern evolution.

In 1905, Rink's 70-year-old Greenland-born widow and collaborator in promoting Greenlandic culture and development, Signe Rink, persuaded a reluctant Danish National Museum to accept her mounted and annotated collection of 204 watercolors by Aron and his contemporary Jens Kreutzman, what she described as "one of the most remarkable picture collections – ethnographic picture collections – in the world, and of which one will likely never again see its equal". When National

4

Xylograph of a drawing by Rink showing Godthåb as it was in 1860. In the left foreground are the harbor and Greenlanders’ dwellings, in the right foreground buildings belonging to the Royal Greenland Trade Department. In the middle, from left to right, are Flagpole Rock, the church, the seminary and the Inspector’s residence. Rink first installed his press under the roof in the room seen at the right. (From Oldendow, 1959)

Drawing by Aron of kayak implements, used as part of Kalâdlit assilialiait woodblock No. 8

5 Museum director Sophus Müller expressed his reservations ("…the collection doesn't quite fall within the proper area of Museum objects"), Rink wrote back that "I want to do everything possible to save the pictures for the [Danish] public …", and finally persuaded him to take the collection for the token sum of only 200 kronor, rather than the 1,000 kronor offered her by the U.S. National Museum in Washington, DC (Meldgaard, 1982b). In 1982, with the beginning of Greenland Home Rule, this collection was transferred to what is now the Greenland National Museum and Archive in Nuuk, which has a total of about 300 works from Aron's total production of about 40 woodcuts, a couple of maps, and about 310 drawings and watercolors (in addition to 250 manuscript pages containing 56 Eskimo folktales). Sixteen watercolors with themes from the sagas about the Greenlanders’ encounters with the Norsemen remained in . Signe Rink also kept a group of 47 watercolors and drawings by Aron that are now in the Oslo University Ethnographic Museum (Kaalund, 1997), and an album of Greenlandic art, including many works by Aron, was prepared by Rink for presentation to the King of and is now in the Royal Library in Copenhagen ("Prøver af grønlænderes Tegninger,…", 1861). Part of the significance of Amory's collection is apparent from the fact that until its discovery these museum collections constituted essentially all of the known works by Aron (see the catalogue raisonné by Thisted, 1999).

The m aps. Among many things, the album contained 8 x 10 inch reduced size photographic copies of two historically important map sheets collected by Amory. The present location of the original maps that were photographed in the early 1940s is not known, but they were printed for insertion at the end of the second volume of a collection of Greenlandic folktales (Kaladlit okalluktualliait/ Grönlandske Folkesagn) published by Rink in a Greenlandic/Danish bilingual edition in 1860.

6 The first of these maps (with an image size of 33 x 36 cm) contained at the top a "Map of Søndre Strømfjord, drawn by the Greenlander Aron at Kangek, from his own observations while hunting reindeer", and at the bottom a "Map of the most southern part of Greenland, drawn by Jakob Lund, catechist and Udligger [head of the udsted/trading station] at Pamiædluk, the most southern trading post".

7 The second map (35 x 35 cm), of the Godthåb area, was made by Samuel Kleinschmidt (see biographical sketch).

8 Nautilus Harbor and Atuagagdliutit. The map by Aron contained several notations, apparently in Amory's hand judging by the close similarity of the handwriting to that of the signature below his Williams class portrait (see below), and one of these provided the first clue as to how Amory happened to be in Greenland that summer of 1860. It reads merely "Nautilus Harbor Lat 65º 15' ", which essentially corresponds to the latitude of Sukkertoppen (also mentioned in one of the notes) which lies at 65º 25'. A search of records in the National Archives revealed only that construction of the schooner "Nautilus-2" was completed in 1838 and that this was the first ship designed for the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey, to which it belonged until it was sold in 1859 to a buyer whose name did not appear in the records.

(Williams College Archives and Special Collections, Williamstown, MA)

9 However, mention of the Nautilus brought to mind a full-page color lithograph made from a watercolor by Aron and bearing the caption "Angutilignuak "Bulldog" Tuluit, Amirikarmiutdlo umiarssuit "Nautilus" avdlatdlo umiarssuit Noungme 1860" (The large British steamer "Bulldog", the American ship "Nautilus", and other ships at Nuuk 1860), that appeared in the first number of the first Greenlandic "newspaper" entitled Atuagagdliutit. Atuagagdliutit was printed on the hand press that Rink set up at his Inspector's residence in 1857, and initially circulated in a few hundred copies, at a time when the population of the entire country was only a little over 10,000. At first it was not printed in a fixed number of issues per year but only in as many copies as the press could cope with. In reality it was not a daily paper and only in form a monthly magazine, since in fact it was an annual that was distributed only once a year, bound like a book. It was not sold or distributed to private families, but rather a number of copies were sent to each local council, which in turn lent them out to the heads of families in the district until the greasy, tattered copies had been read and reread so many times that they were fit only for use as waste paper (Oldendow, 1957, 1959).

The first issue of Atuagagdliutit (with a subtitle, the whole of which can be translated literally as Reading matter handed out. Reports of various matters which it will be interesting to hear about) is dated January, 1861. It began with a 4-column article entitled "Umiarssuarnik aussame 1860me, Nûngmĩtunik" ("About the ships in Nuuk [Godthåb] harbor in summer 1860"), and was accompanied by the previously mentioned color lithograph of these ships shown above. Below the title it is stated that the article was "translated by R. Berthelsen", and one can assume that it was written in Danish by Rink. This is both because it was Rink who set up the press and in April, 1861 appealed for contributions from the Greenlanders (see following pages), and also based on his mentioning in the 10 article about asking Aron for a watercolor painting to be used in its illustration. It is remarkable that this small newspaper, printed on a hand press set up by Hinrich Rink in such a remote and desolate location, was the first in the world to regularly print color illustrations!

11 In December, 1861 Hinrich Rink presented to King Frederick VII of Denmark a 30 x 37 cm album (now in the Royal Library, Copenhagen) that in the title to his handwritten contents page Rink described as "Prøver af grønlænderes Tegninger, samt af Træsnit og Lithographier udførte og trykte i Grønland i Aarene 1857 til 1861" (“Samples of Greenlanders’ drawings, and of woodcuts and lithographs made and printed in Greenland in the years 1857 to 1861”). The first 35 items were watercolors and pencil drawings “by Aron, an excellent seal hunter who lay sick for long periods and, to occupy himself, drew and made woodcuts” (from the contents page shown below). The last two of these 35 works are full-page watercolors drawn from memory of the visit of the British and American ships Bulldog and Nautilus in 1860. No. 34 shows the Bulldog and its collier, while No. 35 is titled by Aron “Englishmen and Americans”, to which is added “in Godthåb in 1860 (drawn by Aron)” in the Danish translation and additional description written on the mount by Rink. It is likely that Copley Amory is to be found somewhere among the visitors!

12

13 Rink’s call for material for Atuagagdliutit (and English translation)

14 In order that the small press set up at the Inspector's residence in the colony of Godthaab can, insofar as possible, provide the Greenlanders with some partly entertaining and partly instructive reading beyond that related to school or religious instruction, it was considered most useful to publish a kind of newspaper, with the name of "Atuagagdliutit". It is not expected to be able to publish this regularly, but rather as the opportunity arises. To the extent that there are contributions and some current events are suitable for reporting, extra numbers will be printed for separate distribution, but in addition a number of copies will be set aside for binding into a continuing collection of issues. The accompanying first trial numbers thus cover:

The ships that visited Godthaab in 1860, and the electric telegraph. Excerpts from Kane's, Mirtschings (McClure's), and McClintock's voyages, especially with regard to the situation and way of living of the different Eskimo tribes. Northumberland-Inlet, with a map drawn by a native living there (sent by Missionary Warmow). An excerpt from the diary of Poul Egede. Fires in Greenland. Travel events in Labrador. The steamship Great Eastern. Early Scandinavians in Greenland.

Because illustrations are considered to be especially useful in connection with the publication's aims, we have attempted to include these insofar as possible. The three wood-blocks were made by the Greenlander Aron from Kangek based on pictures in other publications. In addition, the Greenlander Lars Møller, who after training by the local printer has handled everything concerning the type setting and printing, has now made some trials of printing lithographs. The accompanying examples were printed by Møller and a boy who served as helper, as the plates were provided to them.

We are looking first to those who are fluent in the Greenlandic language and would kindly offer written contributions, but if others are also willing to contribute we will insofar as possible attempt to have their reports translated.

Colony of Godthaab, April 23rd, 1861

H. Rink

------

The mention of the "Nautilus" in the lithograph caption thus allowed the connection with Copley Amory's annotation of "Nautilus harbor" near Sukkertoppen/Maniitsoq on his copy of Aron's map, and the article also provided important information that would eventually enable us to understand just how and why Copely Amory happened to be in Greenland in 1860. Although much of the article concerns a new invention, the telegraph, that is well known to us but was very exciting for the Greenlanders of 150 years ago, it also describes the visit of the "Nautilus", the British steam frigate "Bulldog" and other ships, and provides a good sample of the content of this historically very interesting and important newspaper.

15

About the ships in Godthåb harbor in Summer 1860

"Last summer when all of South Greenland was covered by pack ice, five ships that were on the way to Arsuk to pick up stone had to call at the port in Nuuk because they couldn't reach land further south. Just as these ships docked in the harbor a south wind began to blow, and when the pack ice also began to move towards shore the entire Godthåb fjord filled up. At this time no one expected more ships, but in the evening when the weather was the nicest people yelled "Ship!", and a smaller ship (that we call a schooner) could be seen. It approached slowly, but because of the large amount of ice it dropped anchor beyond the big island. It was at first impossible to go out to it, even in a kayak, and one didn't know who was on board. Only the next morning when it became light did the kayakers go out and return with a letter from the ship's captain. The letter said that on the ship were many Americans who had come up here only to see the country. Although the ship came closer it could not completely enter the harbor because of the pack ice. Just then people again cried "Ship!", and a lot of thick smoke could be seen above the water. As it approached one could see two ships, a big paddle-wheel steamer with another boat in tow. It also towed in the Americans, and this it how it happened that all together 8 ships were docked in Nuuk/Godthåb harbor. The south wind continued to blow and the pack ice didn't move, so these ships remained in the harbor for many days. It was the first time that Godthåb's inhabitants had seen so many ships at the same time in their settlement. We therefore asked Aron from Kangeq – since he had seen it with his own eyes – to paint it from memory, and we made from his picture a lithograph which we have printed.

The Americans, after visiting Labrador (on the other side of the sea) came here from across Davis Strait and anchored by a lot of islands in the vicinity of Maniitsoq/Sukkertoppen. But they didn't recognize the land or meet any people. They collected birds, eggs, and various small animals. Only later as they neared Nuuk/Godthåb could they rejoice at meeting people. They were very eager to obtain Greenlandic hunting implements. Therefore they collected these purchased things, put them away, and took them back home to America, not to use, but only to show to people. Since the Americans knew that Greenland was connected to their own country [Greenland was later demonstrated to be an island, RM], they very much wanted to see the different things that came from there, and were extremely eager to know what a northern country was like, and how its inhabitants could hunt for food in such an ice-cold land. They also collected semi-precious stones, and some went on a reindeer hunt but returned empty-handed.

The English ship was a very big ship, a warship with many soldiers. Some of Godthåb's inhabitants became very frightened when they saw these soldiers come ashore, and wondered why they came to Greenland. These English were sent to measure the sea depth between Iceland, Greenland, and Labrador. The reason for their work was this: a long time ago Europeans and Americans had discovered some wires that could be used for transmitting messages. These wires had a core of copper and the property that when one did something at one end this could be detected at the other end. At the beginning one made wires that reached from one town to another, and with these a person could communicate with another person by affecting one end. In this way people talked back and forth without at all being able to see or write to one another. We will call these wires "A means to communicate something quickly (telegraph)". They are hung from poles stuck in the ground and that reach from one town to another. Later they measured the sea depth and sunk wires that reached from one country to another. This allowed people on islands to communicate with the mainland just by disturbing the wires. It is surely difficult to understand how this can be done, and difficult to believe if one has not seen it in use. But it is real. If an Englishman wants to ask a 16 question of someone in a Scandinavian country (Danes), he only has to go to a place with a telegraph and tell them what he wants to say. When people telegraph in this way the answer will arrive in less than an hour – from a person who is hundreds of miles away. But it is very expensive to use the telegraph. Each word costs money. Therefore people still write, even though there is the telegraph.

Since there was now a telegraph in every town, one wanted to also extend it across the Atlantic ocean from Europe to America. After three years, two large ships met on the ocean, one from Europe, the other from America, both with long telegraph cables as cargo. They connected the ends to one another and lowered the cable down to the sea bottom from one end to the other (the whole way home). Since the ends now reached from England to America, the Queen of England sent her greetings to the American president and quickly received a reply.

But such a greeting is very expensive. After a while this way of communicating became slower and slower until it stopped working entirely, and the cable could no longer be used. This cable that failed was, however, more expensive than all of the goods that the supply ships delivered to Greenland over 10 years!

From this experience they concluded that the cable route over the ocean from England to America was far too long. An American by the name of Schaffner therefore got permission from the Queen of England to run the telegraph cable first to Labrador, then to Greenland, and from there to the and on to Europe. Schaffner visited Qaqortoq/Julianehåb in October, 1859 and Paamiut/Frederikshåb in September, 1860 in a paddle-wheel steamer to investigate a route for the telegraph." (Translated from a Danish version by Birgitte Hertling of the printed Greenlandic article that appeared in Atuagagdliutit, Nr. 1, 1861.)

Wallich's account of the meeting of the "Bulldog" and the "Nautilus". Although the article in the first issue of Atuagagdliutit provided information on the visit of the "Nautilus", it did not answer the question of just who sponsored this voyage and for what purpose. The connection to Williams College and an explanation of this voyage came from a rather obscure source, namely George C. Wallich's book on "The North-Atlantic Sea-Bed: Comprising a Diary of the Voyage on Board H.M.S. Bulldog, in 1860", published in London in 1862. Wallich (1815-1899), a "Surgeon on the Retired List, H.M. Indian Army" was "Naturalist to the Expedition under the Command of F.L. McClintock, R.N., to survey the proposed North-Atlantic telegraph route between Great Britain and America". Insofar as this report provided the connection between the Nautilus and Williams College, and relates from another perspective the convergence of various ships in Godthåb harbor and the unusual weather conditions of that year as described in Atuagagdliutit, I am quoting in their entirety the first few pages of Chapter 3 from Wallich's account, which also give a vivid picture of Greenland.

"After being tempest-tossed for nearly three weeks in the midst of an ice-covered sea, it is pleasant to find ourselves, in company with four other vessels, resting placidly in a land-locked bay, over which the Arctic blasts may blow their fiercest, but whose surface they would find it difficult to arouse into any greater commotion than a ripple. On three sides it is encompassed by steep hills rising up to a height of several hundred feet, with deep water extending almost to their bases. On the fourth, a long spit of rock stretches to the westward and overlaps a bluff headland that closes in the harbour from the fiord outside. Away to the southward, the peaks of "Hiorte Tok," or the " Stag's-horn" mountain, rise above the boundary-walls of our anchorage, whilst an intermediate range sweeps round the eastern margin of the broad fiord, from which it is separated by the spit already referred to.

17 The other vessels consist of a couple of Danish barks of about six hundred tons burden, come in here for shelter until the state of the ice admits of their going into a southern port to load with cryolite; a smart-looking American schooner, carrying a living cargo of fifty students of Williams' College, Massachusetts, bound to these parts on a scientific excursion, under the superintendence of Professor Chadbourne; and lastly our collier brig.

The American was strenuously endeavouring to beat up the channel as we steamed in, but was baffled by the immense quantity of ice about. At the request of her Captain, who came on board, she was towed in to the anchorage by the 'Bulldog.'

Aug. 8.-The scene around us today is both unexpected and interesting. We are completely beset in the ice-pack, which has been streaming in uninterruptedly from seawards ever since our arrival, and may be seen from the masthead still pouring in at the entrance to Baal's River. In the harbour the masses are crowded together in such close order as to render it impossible even for a kayak to move amongst them; whilst the constant rolling over of pieces here and there, owing to the crushing pressure to which they are subject, effectually bars any attempt at passing to and fro on foot.

The whole of the ice appears similar in character to that by which we have been so hampered lower down the coast, and is of too great thickness to have been formed in the fiords on this side of Greenland. The pieces vary from 3 feet in superficial diameter to 40 or more. But in thickness above the water-line there seems to be much greater uniformity, the range being from 2 to 6 feet. Interspersed amongst this pack-ice are a few small bergs, not rising above 10 or 12 feet from the surface, and in all probability fragments of larger masses.

Strange to say, although the temperature of the water at the surface is only a few degrees above freezing-point, wherever a clear space of a few inches intervenes between the pieces of ice, delicately tinted Medusa and glistening Beroidae may be seen struggling upwards from the depths to bask in the sunshine of which they are being so rudely deprived,-whilst numbers of mosquitos, active enough to have emerged from a tropical forest, buzz through the air and evince their sense of its warmth by bloodthirsty attacks on all new comers. Nature for a time seems to search for contrasts. Above, an Italian sky; below, an Arctic sea; as if Summer had stolen away from the soft South to smile on Winter in his grim domain.

Aug.10.-The partial clearing of the ice today has enabled me to reach the 'Nautilus' and make the acquaintance of Professor Chadbourne, from whom I had received a very polite message. I learn from him that the expedition, of which he is the director, is a private one, the entire expenses, even to the chartering the schooner, being liquidated by the students or their friends-the object in view being to teach them how to observe and collect specimens in the various departments of Natural History. The 'Nautilus' left Thomaston on the 27th of June, and, after dropping a small party, en route, at Labrador, reached the Greenland coast, off Julianshaab, the same day that the "Cicerone' reached the neighbourhood of Frederickshaab, and experienced the full force of the gale alluded to by the master of the latter vessel. It may be recollected that on the east coast of Greenland, in almost the same latitude, the 'Bulldog' experienced calm weather on the eclipse day, and that it was not until she had rounded Cape Farewell and emerged from the shelter of the land that the south-westerly storms burst upon her.

Professor Chadbourne informs me that on the morning of the 18th of July the 'Nautilus', in endeavouring to make the land off Frerlerickshaab, met with an immense belt of pack-ice a hundred miles from shore, from which she had barely time to escape when the gale suddenly increased to a

18 perfect hurricane. Running northward before it, in a couple of days the schooner was enabled to round the advanced extremity of the pack, and to anchor in a little harbour in the vicinity of Sukkertoppen, a small settlemeut about eighty miles due north of Goodhaab. But for the absolute necessity of obtaining the supply of coal directed to await us at Frederickshaab, the 'Bulldog ' might therefore have been comfortably ensconced at a like early date.

There are two small stations here, situated near the north-western angle of a rather low peninsula, of nearly a mile in breadth, which abuts on Baal's River, and separates our present harbour from it to the northward. At one of these, namely Hernhutt, the Moravian Missionaries reside, whose predecessors, more than a hundred. years ago, established the first colony in the country. At the other, Godhaab itself, the superintendent of South Greenland (Dr. Rink) and the principal merchants are located. On the eastern side the little peninsula is united with the mainland by a series of hillocks, which gradually increase in height as they approach and sweep round the inner margin of our anchorage; whilst along the shore-line it is protected, by a natural rampart of gneiss-rock, from the waters of Baal's River and the adjacent fiord, which would otherwise inundate it.

The Danish residents inform me that such a severe season has been unknown in Greenland for thirty years, and that the quantity of ice far surpasses that usually met with. On the other hand, it is a remarkable circumstance that the quantity of drift-wood brought round with the ice from Cape Farewell is far below that met with in average seasons."

Additional information on "The Greenland Expedition" was found in an article with that title that was presumably written by Paul Chadbourne (though no author was given) and that appeared in The Williams Quarterly (Vol. 8, No. 2, pp. 75-98, November, 1860). After a brief stop in Labrador the expedition reached "Nautilus harbor" near Sukkertoppen on July 20, 1860. They were standing outside Godthåb on August 3rd, and finally reached land at Ny Herrnhut on August 4th and walked to Godthåb, where they met Signe Rink and visited her house. Hinrich Rink had been away for 2 weeks and did not return until after they left. On August 7th the "Nautilus was moored in a small inlet about three miles from" Godthåb, from where a small party went on a reindeer hunt (apparently unsuccessful, according to the article in Atuagagdliutit). Greenlanders visited their ship by kayak for trading, and a day or two later the Nautilus was towed into Godthåb harbor by the steam frigate Bulldog and its collier under the command of Leopold McClintock ("who discovered the only reliable records" of the ill-fated Franklin expedition in search of a Northwest Passage). There they moored along side two Danish ships "that were waiting for a southern passage" to load up with cryolite in Ivigtut. Before leaving they invited "the Europeans in Godthåb and Ny Herrnhut to a collation on board the Nautilus" to thank them for "the kind treatment they had received on shore". Mrs. Rink also "gave us permission to select what we chose from her husband's valuable collection of birds".

Biographical sketch of Copley Amory. Copley Amory was born into a distinctly "Brahmin" family in Boston on May 10, 1841. On his mother's side he was a great grandson of J.S. Copley, a member of the Royal Academy who was famous as a portrait and historical painter and for whom Boston's Copley Square is named, and was a lineal descendant of Mary Chilton, the first woman to step on Plymouth Rock. On his father's side he was descended from another Plymouth family, many members of which served with distinction in the British navy, including a great uncle who outranked

19 Lord Nelson at the battle of Trafalgar and would have been in command of the squadron had he not been disabled by a wound.

Amory attended Boston Latin School and entered Amherst College in 1857, but soon after transferred to Williams College, where he was an indifferent student but enjoyed reading and good literature. He was described as "undemonstrative, feeling more than he said; opinionated, almost to stubbornness", but liked by his friends, to whom he was loyal. The Williams College Obituaries for 1880 states that "He early developed a taste for natural history, and in 1860 accompanied Dr. Chadbourne in his expedition to Labrador and Greenland. He was one of the prime movers of the expedition, contributed to its funds so liberally that, without his aid and influence, it would never have succeeded, and personally was one of its most efficient workers, equal to any hardship, shrinking from no danger, ready as the best oarsman to render service, as the best German scholar of the party to carry on transactions with the missionaries and other officials, and as a quick and faithful observer to record the results and incidents of the voyage. He had taken with him well selected provision for presents and trading and returned laden with treasures from the new land. This expedition had wonderful fascination for his ardent and adventurous nature, and gave direction to his reading and study in after years. He became one of the best read students in geographical research. He collected and studied the best books on the subject in this country and Europe, and largely contributed to their diffusion. The last expedition to the North Pole, under Capt. De Long, in the yacht Jennette, was furnished with many of his valuable books and maps and he himself was urgently pressed by the commander to accompany him."

Immediately after leaving college he enlisted in the Union Army in August, 1861, and saw service in the Civil War in numerous locations including Missouri, Maryland, and the Cumberland Valley. With some breaks due to illness he served until November, 1864, when he finally resigned due to poor health and "was sent home a life-long invalid". After this he went abroad in pursuit of health, visiting the West Indies and , once being shipwrecked, and took a second trip to Labrador with the artist William Bradford.

In 1865 he married and began a business career as a banker in Boston, but the loss of his wife and infant son in 1869, combined with the financial depression (the "Panic of 1873") and continued poor health, led him to close his business relations in 1873 and begin a series of voyages and excursions with the aim of regaining his health. Although this did improve at times, less than a week after seeing his brother sail from New York he died alone at age 38 of pneumonia, at 50 Beacon Street in Boston, on December 16, 1879, according to his death certificate. He apparently suspected that his last "sickness was fatal, before this was suspected by his friends, for after his death there was found under his pillow a paper with a few words of farewell indistinctly written".

Later fate and preservation of the Amory Collection. Although Amory apparently died alone and without any direct survivors at the young age of 38, he must have impressed upon other family members the importance, at least to him, of the materials he collected on his 1860 Greenland voyage, for these were carefully preserved over the years. Evidently in the early to mid 1940s they were collected into a leather-covered loose-leaf binder with the cover and spine lettered in gold. This album was manufactured between 1940 and 1946 and was the first to employ acetate page covers (that are still perfectly clear and supple over 60 years later!)1. The watercolors, drawings, and other

1This information was obtained from a label in the inside rear cover that reads: "The Ideal Line Crystalite, No. 497½, Genuine Leather, J. L. Hanson Co., Chicago", and a 1978 telephone conversation with William Leighton at J.L. Hanson.

20 materials were carefully mounted on linen hinges in an early application of now common, but at that time much less frequently used, archival conservation techniques, while a few items in the collection (two maps, a pencil or ink drawing, and a lithograph from Rink) that were apparently too large for the 9½ x 11 inch loose-leaf pages are represented only by similarly hinged-in photographic reproductions, the fate of the originals being unknown. The album apparently remained in Boston with no one fully aware of its significance, until it was eventually offered for sale by a Boston book dealer in 1978, almost exactly a century after Amory's death.

21 Other contents of the "Greenland Voyage" album. In addition to a number of woodblock prints by Aron and Rasmus Berthelsen (Nos. 1-5 and 37) from Rink’s 1860 publication of Kalâdlit assilialiait (“Greenlandic Woodcuts”, see below) and some less important or unidentifiable items that will not be covered here, the album contained a colored and titled version of “Kagssumik”.

“The group of men, his brothers-in-law, fought with the son of Kaassassuk in an attempt to kill him” (Hand-colored version of “Kagssumik”, Kalâdlit assilialiait No. 30)

The album also contained three carte de visite photographs2, by far the most interesting of which is a much reduced in size and faded version of Rink's historically important photomontage, that he entitled "Portraits of Greenlanders in the Sukkertoppen and Godthaab Districts, 1862-1863" when it was published in 1866 in the first volume of his Eskimoiske Eventyr og Sagn ("Eskimo Legends and Folktales"; see bottom of following page). The dating of this (probably historically first) photomontage raises some interesting questions. If the photographs were actually taken in 1862-1863, then the carte de visite could not have been obtained by Amory in 1860, or even sent to him before his graduation from Williams in 1861. Though this carte de visite could conceivably have been sent by Rink in 1863 or later to Professor Chadbourne together with the first year's issues of Atuagagdliutit (see copy of dedication page below), in that case it is not clear how it came into Amory's possession when he was serving in the Union army in the Civil War, unless it was given to him by Chadbourne sometime after Amory's return to Boston. ------2These were 5.5 x 8.5 cm albumin prints mounted on 6 x 10 cm cards, and were popular from the 1860s to the 1880s, having developed from the practice of using visiting cards as a means of communication.

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23

Dedication by Rink of a bound volume of the first year’s issues of Atuagagdliutit, that he sent to Paul Chadbourne at Williams College (Williams College Archives and Special Collections, Williamstown, MA)

24 Kalâdlit assilialiait (Greenlandic Woodcuts). Many works by Aron were used to illustrate Rink's collections of Greenlandic folktales. When he published the first two volumes of Kaladlit okalluktualliait/Grönlandske Folkesagn in 1859 and 1860, he had the idea of also collecting the illustrations into a separate little picture book. This was issued in 1860 with the title Kalâdlit assilialiait ("Greenlandic Woodcuts") and contained a total of 39 woodcuts, of which 30 were based on folk tales. The title page vignette of "The Church, Seminary and Inspector's Residence at the Colony of Godthaab" was cut by Rasmus Berthelsen, and was also used as the masthead of the newspaper Atuagagdliutit from 1861-1899 (see below). With this publication Rink took the opportunity to make the press better known abroad by also printing a small number of copies of English and French editions of the book (few of which have survived), which could presumably among other purposes be used as gifts that would attract attention to the work of Greenlandic artists (Oldendow, 1957, 1959).

In the introduction to Kalâdlit assilialiait, Rink wrote that "These pictures are the result of an attempt, begun in 1858-1860, to have wood-block prints drawn, cut and printed by Greenlanders. They have all been cut and, with the exception of Numbers 1 to 8, composed and drawn by 8 or 9 different Greenlanders, who were provided with only the necessary wood and some tools, and older woodcuts to look through. The majority and the best of these were drawn and cut by a man named Aron who has had no other training than is usual for Greenlanders." There follows a list of the titles and in some cases a few further words concerning the picture's theme, but the artists are not individually identified.

An important source for this information exists but appears to have been overlooked by those who have written on 19th century Greenlandic art. This is a letter by the Greenlandic printer of these woodcuts, Lars Møller, that was written in August, 1915 to the Swedish artist and writer Ossian Elgström, whom he met when Elgström visited West Greenland that summer. This letter (copy below), published in his account of his Greenland trip (Elgström, 1916), is of particular importance in that it identifies from first-hand knowledge who made the drawing on which each woodcut is based and who the woodblock was cut by.

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Title page of Kalâdlit assilialiait

27 Joseph Tayler. One important identification in his list from August 3rd, 1915 is that No. 5 of Kalâdlit assilialiait was drawn by "Teyler [sic] (English)" and cut by Aron. The woodblock print (below) is a mirror image of an ink drawing in Amory's collection (bottom of page), with only minor modifications (i.e., depiction of the waves, addition of two icebergs, and the mountains in the background). The list provided by Møller, who printed Kalâdlit assilialiait, thus allows a positive identification of this unrecorded ink drawing that was probably acquired by Copley Amory very shortly after it was made, and provided the subject for one of Aron's well-known woodcuts.

28 Information concerning Tayler appeared in an auction catalogue description of "A double portrait of the engineer and geologist Joseph Walter Tayler and the Eskimo Christian Knud" (below). The scene from Kangerluarsak fjord in Greenland, painted towards the end of the 1850s or in 1860 by the English artist John Edgar Williams (active from 1846 to 1883), was sold at auction by Arne Bruun Rasmussen in Copenhagen (Sale 443, Lot 36, November 2, 1982). The following information on Tayler is translated from the catalogue description, much of which is derived from the cited article in The Illustrated London News.

"Tayler was the first to mine cryolite and discover that it could be used to produce aluminum. The painting was exhibited at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, London, 1861, with the title 'J.W. Tayler, F.G.S., The Greenland Traveler and Christian Canute, Esquimaux, Greenland, in the month of September'. Joseph Walter Tayler, the son of Admiral Tayler, was born around 1825. He devoted his life to arctic exploration, geology, and mining, and had significant success in all three areas. He spent most of 18 years in Greenland. Tayler's first expedition was in 1850 after the Danish government had given permission for exploration and mining. In 1854 he arrived at Ivigtut with a crew of workers and began to mine lead ore, which occurs together with cryolite. On February 2, 1856, the following was reported in The Illustrated London News: 'Arsuk fjord is the only place in the world where cryolite is to be found. It is a white mineral and will probably be used to manufacture aluminum'. To illustrate the article, Tayler made seven engravings. The same year, Tayler was elected to membership in The Geological Society and published the article: 'On the cryolite of Evigtok, Greenland'. Three places in Greenland are named for him: Taylers Harbor, Taylers Mountain, and Taylers River."

29 Hinrich Rink and his Greenland press. During the first years of Atuagagdliutit, Rasmus Berthelsen (1827-1901) was the editor of the paper, with Lars Møller as his secretary and technical assistant. Berthelsen was a teacher (catechist) and psalm writer, and was responsible for many of the translations to and from Danish and Greenlandic of articles that appeared in Atuagagdliutit, and of the Greenlandic folk tales for the four volume bilingual collection that appeared between 1859 and 1863 under the title Kaladlit okalluktualliait/Grönlandske Folkesagn.

Hinrich Rink Lars Møller (Sent by Rink to Chadbourne; Williams College Archives and Special Collections, Williamstown, MA)

Rasmus Berthelsen

Lars Møller later took over as editor and continued right up until 1922. Both his fellow countrymen and the Danes in Greenland called Møller by the name of Arkaluk (which means the elder sister's younger brother), and he is still known and called by this name in Greenland. Arkaluk came of mixed Danish and Greenlandic blood, in almost equal proportions through several generations. He was born in Godthåb (Nuuk) in 1842, the son of a carpenter and local government employee. He was only 15 when Rink persuaded him to come to work at his newly established press, under the nominal supervision of his "master" Rasmus Berthelsen, who was himself completely self- taught in the art of printing and without the slightest technical training. Conditions at the press were very difficult at the time for a number of reasons ranging from the cold climate to a shortage of supplies, and Arkaluk, who had only a very slight knowledge of books and read and spoke very little Danish, had additional problems in communicating with Rink, who could not yet understand 30 Greenlandic very well. However, his natural intelligence, resourcefulness and manual dexterity served him well and he improved very quickly, a process accelerated by a brief period of training in Denmark in the winter of 1861-1862, where he learned book printing as well as possible under the circumstances, and received some additional training in book binding and lithography, which he particularly enjoyed.

From the beginning and for many years after, the press was carried on as a kind of seasonal activity, the most important work being done during 8 or 9 months of the year, while the press lay idle during the summer when Lars Møller and his assistants collected firewood and provisions for the coming winter and went hunting and fishing, according to the old Greenlandic custom. Møller worked under seven successive inspectors whom he often accompanied on long journeys up the coast, and acted as interpreter on the annual countrywide inspection visits. In this way he got to know many people and places and acquired an enormous circle of friends, all of which gave him a very thorough knowledge of Greenland and what might be stirring beneath the apparently calm surface of his people. When he died in January, 1926 he was mourned as a pioneer by the entire country.

Above left: Engagement photograph of the 34-year old dr. phil. Hinrich Rink and his 17 year younger fiancée Signe Møller, daughter of the Danish kolonibestyrer (colony manager) Jørgen Møller at Frederikshåb (from Oldendow, 1957). Above right: Lars Møller and his wife, ca. 1915 (from Elgström, 1916) Due to his failing health, as early as 1868 Rink had to give up the job of inspector that he loved so much. By that time he had spent 16 winters and 21 summers in Greenland, but the long voyages that he made in an open boat took their toll, and the severe rheumatism from which he suffered 31 sometimes made it impossible for him even to straighten his back. To the sorrow of the whole country he therefore returned to Denmark where he ended his career as head of the Royal Greenland Trade Department. However, in 1882 he resigned in disgust from that position after having innumerable obstacles placed in his path by a government bureaucrat and politician, Hugo Hørring (1842-1909) who had no direct knowledge of Greenlandic society and conditions but highly paternalistic and conservative views on its administration and development. After leaving his post at the Royal Greenland Trade Rink was replaced - by Hugo Hørring!, who remained in that position until 1890 and later served as Interior Minister, Council President, Finance Minister and Justice Minister. (On the Rink-Hørring feud, see Rink, 1882; Hørring, 1882, 1883). Later that same year (1882) the bitterly disappointed Rink left Denmark together with Signe and retired to Christiana (present-day Oslo), Norway, where he died in 1893. (Much of the information in this section is from Oldendow, 1957 and 1959.)

Samuel Kleinschmidt was born at the Herrnhut mission in Lichtenau, South Greenland in 1814 to parents who had come to Greenland in the late 18th century as missionaries for the Moravian Brothers. At the age of 8 or 9 he was sent to school in Germany, and at 26 he returned permanently to Greenland to teach at various Moravian missions and later, after having broken off with the Moravians, at the Danish teacher’s training seminary at Godthåb. Kleinschmidt is well known for his seminal contributions to Greenlandic linguistics, including the first grammar to be based on Greenlandic rather than Latin structure (Grammatik der Grönländischen Sprache, 1851, still a necessary reference for linguists today), his standardization of Greenlandic orthography (not revised until 1973), his Greenlandic dictionary (Den grønlandske Ordbog, 1871), and for his translations of the Bible into Greenlandic. It is less well known that Kleinschmidt was in a way responsible for the beginning of Aron’s artistic career when in 1858 he showed to Rink Aron’s apparently first pencil drawing. Aron had sent this to Kleinschmidt as a gift together with a letter thanking him for his help in selling his kayak, at a time when he was too ill to hunt and needed the money to buy Danish food to survive the winter (Meldgaard, 1982b). Due to his legendary reserve, this is the only photograph that Samuel Kleinschmidt ever allowed anyone to take of him. It is by the expedition leader J.A.D. Jensen, who over many years collaborated with Kleinschmidt in making maps for the Royal Danish Nautical Charts Archive. But the picture was taken only in the year before Kleinschmidt’s death, when he was senile and too infirm to avoid being photographed. It shows his characteristic gnarled features and the Greenlandic clothing that he always wore.

Although Kleinschmidt was a rigorous, productive and imaginative scholar, he was also in many respects an opinionated, stubborn, eccentric, and generally difficult man who never married, 32 never wore underwear, seldom washed himself, and always wore Greenlandic clothes (kamiks, sealskin trousers and anorak), remarking about himself that “by inclination I am Greenlandic” (Wilhjelm, 2001). After about the age of 70 his previously robust health began to fail and his last years were trying both for him and for those around him who lovingly and unselfishly attended to his needs. He died in tragic circumstances in February 1886, when weather conditions were so severe that the funeral had to be postponed for several days, and even then a fresh howling storm quickly filled the orchestra instruments and the grave itself with snow, so that the burial service had to be hastily concluded (Oldendow, 1959). But as one of the participants said: “Such a strange man must necessarily get a strange burial” (Wilhjelm, p. 394).

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LITERATURE

Elgström, Ossian: Moderna eskimåer - Skildringar från en resa i Västgrönland sommaren 1915 (Modern Eskimos - Images from a voyage to West Greenland in the summer of 1915), Bonniers, Stockholm, 1916.

Hørring, Hugo: Bemærkninger til justitsraad, dr. phils. H. Rinks Skrift: Om Grønlaenderne m.m. (Remarks concerning Justice Counselor Dr. H. Rink's publication "About the Greenlanders, etc."), Gad, Copenhagen, 1882, and Fortsatte Bemærkninger …, 1883, 110 + 32 pp.

Kaalund, Bodil: Aron fra Kangeq 1822-1869. Brøndum, Copenhagen, 1997.

Knuth, Eigil: Aron of Kangeq, 1822-1869: The seal hunter who became father of Greenland’s art of painting. Danish National Museum, Copenhagen, 1960.

Knuth, Eigil: Alut Kangermio. Aron fra Kangek’ – Aron of Kangek’ (1822-1869). Det Grønlandske forlag (Munksgaard), Godthåb, 1968.

Meldgaard, Jørgen: ARON – En af de mærkværdigste Billedsamlinger i Verden (ARON – One of the most remarkable picture collections in the world). Nationalmuseet, Copenhagen, 1982a.

Meddgard, Jørgen: Signe Rink – Kvinden bag Aron's og Jens Kreutzmann's grønlandske akvareller (Signe Rink – The woman behind Aron's and Jens Kreutzmann's Greenlandic watercolors). Nationalmuseets Arbejdsmark, 1982b, pp. 65-72.

Oldendow, Knud: Bogtrykkerkunsten i Grønland og mændene bag den (Printing in Greenland and the men behind it), F.E. Bording, Copenhagen, 1957 (236 pages).

Oldendow, Knud: Printing in Greenland, Munksgaard, Copenhagen, 1959 (44 pages).

"Prøver af grønlænderes Tegninger, samt af Træsnit og Lithographier udførte og trykte i Grønland i Aarene 1857 til 1861", issued in a facsimile edition under the title Prøver af grønlandsk Tegning og Trykning 1857-1861 (Copenhagen, 1980).

Rink, Hinrich: Om Grønlænderne, deres Fremtid og de til deres Bedste sigtende Foranstaltninger (About the Greenlanders, their future and the measures aimed at benefiting them), Høst, Copenhagen, 1882 (102 pp.) and 1884 (95 pp.).

Rosing, Emil and Haagen, Birte: Aron from Kangeq and the Dano-Greenlandic Museum Cooperation. Arctic Anthropology, 23:247-258 (1986).

Thisted, Kirsten: "Således skriver jeg, Aron". Samlede fortællinger & illustrationer af Aron fra Kangeq ("Like this I write, Aron". Collected stories and illustrations by Aron from Kangeq). Atuakkiorfik, Nuuk/Copenhagen,1999, Vols. I and II.

Wallich, George Charles: The North-Atlantic Sea-Bed: Comprising a Diary of the Voyage on Board H.M.S. Bulldog, in 1860 - Observations on the presence of animal life, and the formation and nature of organic deposits, at great depths in the ocean. John van Voorst, London, 1862.

Wilhjelm, Henrik : "af tilbøielighed er jeg grønlandske" – Om Samuel Kleinschmidts liv og værk ("by inclination I am Greenlandic" – About Samuel Kleinschmidt's life and work), Det Grønlandske Selskabs Skrifter XXXIV, Copenhagen, 2001.

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